B. B. King

I could see the blues was about survival.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.

I never use that word, retire.

Ignorance is bliss? That’s bull, far as I’m concerned. Because I was making a half a cent a side – one penny for a record. It’s like building buses, for example. If you built this bus for me and I didn’t know anything about it, you could charge me whatever I’d pay for it. Now, which one of us is crazy? Me. And that’s the way they did me on the records. But I don’t fault them for it, because if you don’t know, you don’t know. It took me to learn.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother’s aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.

We recorded to document ourselves, not to sell a lot of records.

Miles’ sessions were not typical of anybody else’s sessions. They were totally unique.

Most of the stuff I learned to play, I learned in high school. I had a band in high school, a jazz-fusion thing, and I was the keyboard player. I was interested in how the instruments worked and the theory behind playing with them.

You only get better by playing.

Your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’ So hush little baby don’t you cry.

This be an empty world without the blues.

The weird thing about bass is the simplest stuff to do is the hardest.

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

When Bird came on the scene, it was shocking as in the Bible: everything was dark and then there was light.

The other day I came across a recording I made of a night at my apartment when I was living with Kris Kristofferson. Bob Dylan had been around earlier and we were all passing around the guitar. Whenever it came to my turn I would run into the kitchen and say I’d left the coffee on the stove or something. Shyness. Scared to perform.

You get that right tickin’ rhythm, man and its ON!

When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.

A Jazz performance centers upon the process of creation. The final objective is not only the finished product, but the path and process taken towards it.